Inactive: POTUS
Entries by Oscar Chamberlain
Welcome to POTUS. This group blog is devoted to politics, history and presidents.
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Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Some Health Care Thoughts
From a standpoint of social justice and from a standpoint of cost controls, the present system is broken. The current system provides neither universal coverage nor efficient coverage. Market-based competition does not work well when demand is inelastic, as it is in essential health care, and current insurance regulations make what market competition that is possible even less effective.
This summary of health care in other countries helps to underscore how many ways there are to try to fix this. What I particular liked was the last section which highlights the diversity of approaches currently operating within the United States.
Of course, being for reform is not the same thing as supporting the current proposals. While the Republican Big Lie about Death Panels deserves condemnation—particularly because it incorporates a second lie, which is that the current system does not condemn people to death even when proper health care could save them—its success in generating unease has underscored several key weaknesses in the push for health care reform.
One is the problem that many Americans have decent health insurance, and many of them they fear its dilution more than they support its reform. Not everyone so blessed rejects the notion that good reforms would strengthen their current situation—otherwise there would be a lot less support than there is—but that is hard to feel certain about when the reforms themselves are still in flux. That is the second major problem with the effort toward reform. The result is the sort of unease that reduces vocal support.
This quote from a Republican strategist captures the problem well.
"The lack of a specific Obama plan has created an imbalance in the emotional energy between the two sides," Schnur said. "So it's relatively easy for the opposition to find the least desirable aspect of any of those bills and go to town on it."
From the reform standpoint, there is a bit of good news here. It suggests that if decent reforms are passed, the support will be greater than the polls presently indicate. But I don’t know how many politicians with divided constituencies will find that sufficiently encouraging.
Another problem is that many Americans want contradictory things. This summary of an AARP survey is a nice example. Here’s the key quote:
Poll results indicated nearly 65 percent of those surveyed said they oppose increasing taxes to pay for covering the more than 46 million uninsured Americans, the business journal said. However, a majority polled said they believed all people should be covered and 73 percent said they are unwilling to see private health insurance premiums rise to cover those costs.
This is the sort of thing that Rick Shenkman loves to point out.
As I said above, from a standpoint of social justice and from a standpoint of cost controls, the present system is broken. What angers me about the Republican Party leadership is not that they have rejected Obama’s approach; it is that they have embraced that broken system.
The Republican leadership showed no interest in attacking this problem when they controlled the presidency and Congress. In fact, the manner in which they expanded Medicare to include prescription drugs arguably made it worse, because it did not allow the government to negotiate drug prices effectively. They now have made defeating any major Democratic proposal their defining issue for 2010. This is clearly indicated by their proposed “Seniors’ Bill of Rights,” which is dedicated to maintaining the broken status quo, including their own flawed approach to prescription coverage for seniors.
If Obama scales back--going for reforms that improve the current system but that fall short of the “public plan option” that many people, myself included, considered important--can he pass something good? ( This article summarizes what “good” might be.) Maybe. Not all Republicans want to follow their leadership on opposing any successful measures, and some of the wavering blue-dog Democrats could claim a victory. I would support it, too.
But it’s a messy situation out there. And I truly have no idea where we will go from here.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Recessional
Fireworks and bad economic news make for an odd—though hardly unprecedented—combination. “Don't Mistake the Economy's Sparklers for Fireworks,” a Steven Pearlstein op ed in the Washington Post, is a perfectly reasonable headline under the circumstances.
I find more interesting a Wall Street Journal article on the decline in Rest Areas. This is a case of budget woes accelerating a trend already in place. I particularly liked the insight that there are no poets or historians of rest areas like there are for Route 66 or other icons of our automotive past. Google for Route 66, and the site just linked comes up first. Search for Rest areas and you get a list of rest areas. (I am amazed that a Wikipedia entry did not come first in either case.)
Later this summer, we will be taking a trip down to Texas and Oklahoma to visit relatives and old friends, so perhaps it’s natural for rest areas to be on my mind. It’s actually been several years since we took an extended car trip. It’s something we used to enjoy, and I will be curious to see how much we still do.
Perhaps we will also get a sense of the mood around the country, or at least along our route. There’s a lot of pain out there, and governmental stimulus, to the extent that it can help, is, at best, just beginning to arrive. The old rule of thumb that it takes at least 9 months for government spending to impact the economy seems not to have been superseded by the Obama administration’s attempt to move faster. (Or perhaps it has moved faster, and the situation would have been much worse without it. That’s a truly scary thought.)
Bad times are pruning winds. Closures like this one, a skating rink in Rice Lake, might have happened anyway, what with changes in taste and demographics. Still that it happened now is due to the recession, and it’s a community loss, as the comments below the story suggest. Multiply that by hundreds and thousands, and you have these times.
The theory is that, despite the mess, the pruning creates new opportunities. To continue the image, the sun hits the ground through the broken limbs, and new things can grow. But this wind is looking more like a series of hurricanes, breaking the good as well as the bad. There is no rule that the market will lead us to a better life. It has not taste, no morals, no sense of justice. In good times, the wealth that following the market creates makes these flaws acceptable, and people love the Invisible Hand. In bad times that acceptance changes. That’s why people support government intervention in bad times, even though they know that government is far from perfect either.
There is still much good here, in this country. This cover story about two upcoming fireworks displays in Rice Lake is a reminder of the joy that most of us share in this country. Standing out in the night air (hoping that the mosquitoes are not too bad) and watching and sharing is free. And the fireworks are about more than light and noise. They are also, always, about hope.
The hard grind of the present, and the growing sense that hard work won’t be rewarded isn’t going away. There are no guarantees that the belief in work rewarded won’t go away for good; hence the title of this piece. It refers to Rudyard Kipling’s poem that balances his love of country with his understanding that its time could pass. I reject many of the values that Kipling celebrated, but I share his sense that even at our height, some modesty is in order. We are learning about modesty these days.
Still, the 4th is about exuberance. And wherever you are and however you do it, celebrate what is good in this country, whatever you perceive that good to be. Take care, and have fun.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Many Questions, Few Answers
My apologies for another long hiatus. Let’s just say that the academic life has been interesting. (Fun, too, on occasion, but budget cuts are too much with us right now for me to revel in the fun.)
But honestly, the big reason I have not been around isn’t my day job. It’s that I have had so little to say about the big issues. I have lots of questions and precious little that sounds like an answer.
I don’t know if the GM bankruptcy/bailout is going to work. This article suggests that GM could become chic, but this analysis of the new GM ad does not inspire optimism. Perhaps it is better live.
I don’t know if President Obama’s speech in Egypt will plant seeds of positive change though I would like to agree with Thomas Friedman that it’s possible.
I have deep concerns about his emerging policy in Afghanistan. I don’t see a resolution as possible without some deep changes in Pakistan, and I don’t see how his surge (or any surge) can accomplish that. I don’t have an easy out for him, either, at least not one that does not leave some pretty damaging chaos behind.
I am discomforted by many of Obama’s actions concerning enemy combatants. He is confirming my suspicion during the campaign that he would reject many G. W. Bush policies (a truly good thing) but not Bush’s claims of presidential power. In so doing, he is following the lead of perhaps all previous presidents regarding foreign policy and military conflict. They may have rejected a predecessor’s policies but they never rejected his claims of power. I voted for Obama in spite of that and not because of it, but still I hoped that I might be wrong.
Maybe I’m having second thoughts about Obama and don’t want to admit it, and that is keeping me quiet. I don’t think that is the case. Even if I knew in November what would have happened up until today, I would have been comfortable voting for him over John McCain. Right or wrong, Obama’s policies show a high degree of competence, and the more I look back at the campaign, the more the McCain of 2008 looks like a man who simply was not ready to be president.
For what it’s worth, I still think the McCain of 2000 might have been a good president, though far more conservative than I would have liked. Almost certainly he would have been a far better president than the man who won or than the man who McCain was eight years later. Sometimes age and experience don’t equal improvement.
Similarly, I have long wondered if the Richard Nixon of 1960 might have been a far more positive president than the Nixon of 1968. Perhaps the narrow and not-entirely-legitimate defeat of 1960 and the 1962 California campaign exacerbated the politics-is-war attitudes that were already part of his personality. If so, it might have been at the cost of what I think was a genuine desire to be a statesman in the better senses of the term.
Perhaps I am wrong and it is the day job stuff that has kept me from commenting, by limiting the time I have to focus what analytical powers that I have left on the current scene. And if someone want to suggest that my analytical powers were never all that hot, that’s OK, too.
I do hope to check in regularly now, with more to say. I’m curious about the emerging Obama/Democratic health care policy. There is a fine case to be made that the current system is not viable, and that a shift toward the public sector would have a powerful and positive impact on jobs. But the details, the details! Who knows what could actually pass at this point?
More questions than answers. So I end today as I began, but with a bit more hope that I can point toward an answer every once in a while.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Health Care Reform Thoughts
This began as a response to a comment by Mike Mainello to Rick’s post just below. It got long enough that I decided to expand it a bit further and post it here instead. The subject is health care reform. The basic point I hope to make is that all systems have tradeoffs, and one has to think carefully as to what the best tradeoffs are.
A majority of Americans believe everyone should have access to basic health care, even if the person in need cannot afford it. If a nation truly wishes to achieve that, it precludes a solely market-based approach because the market alone would shape health care in a way that maximizes profit. Caring for the poor is never going to be profitable in this context.
So the question is what mix of public and private organization does the best job or providing basic care to all, while researching new treatments and otherwise maintaining or improving public health. It is hard question to answer for a range of reasons. Here are three:
Health care treatments evolve.Public expectations as to what care should be insured evolve with the treatments.
Someone or some mechanism has to draw the line between what care can be covered and what cannot.
Different countries have different answers and accept different trade-offs in addressing these challenges.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Dreams and Better Angels
“And I've seen more dreams
Riding on his eyes,” Ricki Lee Jones, “Juke Box Fury”
It’s hard not to gag at the excess of hype and attention preceeding today's inauguration. My throat reflex moment came when someone on Sports Center compared Barack Obama’s run for the presidency with the Cardinal’s run for the Super Bowl. Enough already.
No more coins, either. Please.
I have to consciously dig through the rubble of praise and opportunism to get down to the truths that propel this excess. This is an extraordinary moment. The fortuitous coincidence that Martin Luther King Day immediately precedes this inauguration has underscored just how historic the election of Obama is. It has also had the fortunate side effect of making MLK Day a true memorial to King. Tributes that seem dutiful in most years have a far greater resonance in this year. The fulfillment of one dream seems a bit closer today.
Now Obama has to make a speech. Some people are expecting a cross between John Kennedy’s “Ask Not” with Abraham Lincoln’s “Better Angels and Franklin Roosevelt’s rejection of fear. Those are tough acts to follow. He has shown the skill to equal them, but whether his words ring down in history will not depend on the eloquence and truth in those words.
The success of this speech and of his presidency will hinge on the nation’s economy and on his handling of crises both known and unforeseen. It will hinge on the intelligence of his advisors and even more on his capacity to weigh their strengths and weaknesses. It will hinge on the spirit of the populace and Obama's capacity to touch what is good in it. It will hinge on luck, always remembering that luck favors the prepared, but not by much.
Still, despite the the wall-to-wall hype and the outsized expectations, I look forward to this moment. I look forward to it for the good that his election has already accomplished and in the hope that his administration helps America to listen to the “better angels of our nature.” I also hope that Americans (including myself) remember over the next few years that all any person can do is act “with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right." May we remember in humility and mercy that the vision of no human is perfect but that, despite our limitations, we still have the obligation to do what good that we can.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
A thought for the day
A thought from an article in Salon by David Brin. I find it, and the article as a whole, cheering in these restive, often melancholy times:
Already we are in an era when no worthwhile skill is ever lost, if it can draw the eye of some small corps of amateurs. Today there are more expert flint-knappers than in the Paleolithic. More sword makers than during the Middle Ages. Vastly more surface area of hobbyist telescopes than instruments owned by all governments and universities, put together.
On that note, whatever the holy days that you cherish, may this season bring light.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Silences
Money is the big news. And rightly so. An international economic meltdown touches lives in every country. But other issues are out there. Barack Obama keeps building his cabinet. The unignited threats in France gave an adrenaline shot of fear this morning. The all-too-effective Mumbai attacks have forced a debate in India concerning its security laws. These have made headlines, too. And rightly so.
But other stories don’t get the headlines they deserve.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
To all of you . . .
. . . a Happy Thanksgiving!
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Interregnums
Barack Obama is proposing a bailout for the auto industry.
Let’s leave aside for a moment the question of whether a bailout is wise or not and focus on the precedent Obama is setting. He is trying to shape policy as if he were president, but he has no official power as yet, beyond being a senator.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Walt Whitman, “Election Day, November, 1884”.
A friend sent me a Walt Whitman poem this morning. Honestly, it's not one of Whitman's great efforts. Still, when I was standing in line before 7 am, surrounded by people all focused on one duty, the majesty of this process, the way each small piece becomes part of a whole, did strike me. In that spirit, I reprint it below.
Friday, October 10, 2008
"How Little We Know"
Maybe it happens this way
Maybe we really belong together
But after all, how little we know
Maybe it's just for a day
Love is as changeable as the weather
And after all, how little we know
No, this Johnny Mercer lyric does not open another discussion of how little the American people know. It came to me as I finally put a political bumper sticker on the back of my car yesterday. As I smoothed it out—deeply pleased about getting a sticker on straight for a change—I had two thoughts. I thought while looking at the candidate's name, “I hope you win.” My second thought was something along the lines of “I hope the future shows I am right.” Soon afterwards that lyric—complete with Lauren Bacall’s dusky contralto voice—popped into my head.
How little we know.
These are not second thoughts. I have examined the alternatives and feel comfortable with my candidate. While something could shake that comfort in the next month, that something is not on the horizon. If anything the opposite is occurring.
Yet, in the midst of this campaign that keeps getting uglier, it might be good for those of us who are both historians and partisan to recall that knowing the past does not do much to help us predict the future. How many predicted that Bill Clinton’s greatest successes would be in working with (and over) a Republican congress after failing to work well with a Democratic congress? Who would have predicted that the current Bush Administration would do more to make the government responsible for day-to-day economy than any presidency since FDR pushed the NRA through Congress?
On a larger level, I have often wondered what would have happened if Gerald Ford had been reelected in 1976. Would Reagan have become president in 1981? Would the world be better off, or as much as I disagreed with Reagan’s policies, did he provide the nation’s majority with a much needed sense of optimism? Not even the most intelligent of us can anticipate how the temperament, values, and even policy goals of a candidate will fare when he or she encounters the unexpected, whether it be an enemy attack, economic turmoil, conflict among alleged allies, or something else entirely.
I would not suggest that historians withdraw from the political field. First, we are citizens, and second, we can use the past to shed light on the visible challenges before us. Nor should we shrink from making choices in the face of the unknown. That is the human condition. But I think that we, as professionals, should resist as best we can the tendency of politics to cross the line from opposing to demonizing political foes, even though it sometimes seems all too tempting.
For in the end, we should know better than most how little we do know of what fate (or love, to return to that fine song) will bring.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Interlude: the impact of a poet
I suppose I should be all a’twitter about the debate last night. Once I read about it, perhaps I will be. But my mind is elsewhere this insomniac morning.
A poet died on Wednesday. His name was Hayden Carruth.
I first encountered Carruth as an anthologist. He edited a book of American 20th century poetry called The Voice that is Great Within Us. The title is from a Wallace Stevens poem, “Evening without Angels.”
It really can’t be called a 20th century anthology anymore. It came out in 1971, so it barely covers the first 2/3 of the old century. No matter. I ran across it sometime in the 1970s and it opened doors and doors and doors of poets and poems and universes to me. It still does. It is the only anthology of poems I have had to buy a second time, because I wore the first one out. Each year I see something new as understanding grows, one hopes, with age.
It was some years later that I looked for his poetry, and found some marvelous works. This one, “Eternity Blues,” will give you a sense of his sensibility though perhaps not of his amazing ability to unity strict forms and a colloquial, even slangy speech. Nor is it set in New England where he lived and where much of his poetry is rooted. Still, it’s on the web, and it’s a start.
His death is not the reason I was having trouble sleeping. There are more trivial though irritating concerns that opened my eyes and got me out of bed. But as I got ready to get off the computer and away from the tasks at hand, I remembered the loss. Another person who I had always hoped to meet and never did. I should have written him, simply to honor him, but I am poor at that. So I write this today.
In the anthology I mentioned, he restricted his own entry to what he called “Five Short-Shorts,” “the last five of several hundred” that he wrote while editing. An appropriate one to end on would be this:
A hard journey. Yes
it must be. At the end they
always fall asleep.
However, I think I will end with the very last of the five.
So be it. I amPS (Oct. 15): A fine 2005 article on Carruth.
a wholeness I’ll never know.
Maybe that’s the best.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Rejection of a President
I’m not as positive as the majority of critics this morning that delaying the bailout is a seriously bad thing. But has there ever been a crisis in which a president was more irrelevant? As Dan Froomkin put it, you can ”put a fork” in George Bush now. I find that an ugly image, even for a politician I dislike, but the Republicans' rejection of their former master was even ruder.
Bush has earned this rejection. The bailout as originally proposed had the primary earmark of any major Bush Administration response to a crisis—the aggrandizement of presidential power with no pretense of restraint. Only this time, he failed to reckon with bi-partisan anger with his bumbling and scheming and with the Republican recognition—at last-- than Bush’s long-term efforts have been to strengthen the national government at the expense of Congress, the states, and the individual.
From the Democratic standpoint, Secretary Paulsen’s belated willingness to accept limitations on executive compensation got him some votes. But his original insistence that the only people who would not pay would be the people who did most to create the crisis helped spark the popular opposition that pushed a majority of Republicans and a significant number of Democrats to still just say no.
PS (10/1) An intrguing alternative approach to address the crisis.
Friday, September 19, 2008
White Privilege, Identity and the 2008 Election
A friend sent me this post that interprets the campaign from the perspective of white privilege.
I don’t agree with all of it, and the world is more complex than a single perspective like this can admit. But enough of it rings true that I want to share it for comments.
I will also pose these questions. In a political culture in which identity politics has become more and more overt, is this the most diverse set of major candidates that we have had? Or are we so focused on the differences that we are not seeing what they have in common in terms of background?
Monday, September 15, 2008
Whigs and Democrats
First, my apologies for being gone for so long. My life has been interesting since June—not “may you live in interesting times” interesting, but the number of dull moments have been few.
Now to work. I’m a Whig.
Friday, May 23, 2008
God, ministers, and politics
If God intervenes in presidential politics, he or she does so discretely. That’s frustrating to those candidates who want God’s endorsement. So they turn to the Supreme Deity’s local representatives. Alas, as Barack Obama and John McCain have learned recently, the local representatives are all too human. They are not necessarily more bigoted than the rest of the population, but they speak in public a lot. The most successful ones play to their audiences emotions, and those public displays generate lots and lots of verifiable quotes. Just a few nasty quotes can skunk a long-sought endorsement.
Once upon a time American politicians were not always so eager to have the clergy involved in politics. A number of antebellum state constitutions banned active ministers and priests from holding political office. This ban had its roots in the rejection of state-sponsored religion, particularly in the former colonies where the Anglican Church had been strong. It was reinforced in the late antebellum era, at least in a few places, by the association of the antislavery movement with some northern ministries.
In parts of the North, the antipathy that many mainstream politicians had for evangelicals pushing issues like temperance was quite high in the 1840s and 1850s. Of course, the efforts by some northern evangelicals to increase their political influence in the face of such antipathy was one factor in the creation of the Republican Party.
A ban on active clergymen holding office would be unconstitutional today, and rightly so. More practically, truly enforcing such a ban—and I’m not sure that one was ever put to the test—would require government to figure out just who is or who isn’t an active minister. That might even be harder to figure out than whether or not some bloggers are journalists.
Still, religion is not going to leave the current campaign. The recent California Supreme Court decision on gay marriage has energized many conservative Christians who are part of the Republican’s base. Whether the issue will have the same traction this year as in 2004, I doubt, but on balance it is still likely to help McCain some, if only by getting some of those Republican evangelicals who are suspicious of him to vote anyway.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Of the Department of Homeland Security, ICE
The Washington Post is starting a new series of articles on the rotten conditions for immigrant detainees. To summarize the first article, the Department of Homeland Security's poor to incompetent health care has killed people.
There are a lot of issues related to this that I would love for the presidential candidates to address. One is the ghastly behemoth that the Department of Homeland Security has become.
With that in mind, let’s take a quick look at the DHS structure and where detainees fall within it.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
The Art of Condescension
From the Online Oxford English Dictionary, the second definition of condescend:
2. fig. To come or bend down, so far as a particular action is concerned, from one's position of dignity or pride; to stoop voluntarily and graciously . . .
It is hard to remember that condescension once had a positive political meaning. In the colonial and revolutionary era, it indicated the ability of someone of higher class to communicate with his inferiors by carefully lowering his demeanor in a way that suggested a meeting of spirits without suggesting equality. It was an art that upper class men prided themselves on and, for a time, was openly respected by their inferiors.
Jacksonian white male democracy tossed overt condescension out of political life. All white guys were equal and no politician should forget it. However a modified version slipped back in on the stump because most people wanted their presidents to be of the people but superior, too. So candidates ate barbecue, kissed babies, and otherwise recognized the equality of the voters, while trying to exude that certain something that evoked superiority and leadership.
Tree stumps gave way to stages, radio microphones, TV cameras, and YouTube, but this modified form of condescension—to demonstrate equality while somehow evoking superiority—remains a challenge for presidential candidates. All must condescend, and it seems possible that Barack Obama might fail to win the presidency not because he condescends, but because he does it badly while John McCain does it well. And Clinton? See below.
Friday, May 2, 2008
Throw the bus next time.
David Segal at the Washington Post gives a rolling political cliche just what it deserves
Sunday, April 6, 2008
What should elections, and primaries, measure?
Over at Cliopatria, K. C. Johnson started an interesting discussion of the current debate over “voter disenfranchisement” and the Democratic party.
This post began life as I was composing a response to a comment by Nicholas Norden there: “It's discouraging that the Obama campaign has characterized the popular vote metric as legitimate.” But my reply got so long, I decided to put it here, instead.
The choice of metric depends on what one hopes to measure.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Some thoughts on Obama's speech
Like him or dislike him, Barack Obama has done something extraordinary with his speech on race. It was not simply an attempt to deflect attention from his politically dubious choice of pastors—though of course that was the immediate “inspiration” for it. It was also an attempt to forge a new relationship between race and politics. In fact, it will only work politically if it works idealistically; if it really does result in dialogue; if that dialogue really does find common ground.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
2008 and 1824
Stephen Schlessinger has an interesting HNN post on the Myth of the Pledged Delegates. He looks back at several 20th century races in which the conventions did make the nominations. He also makes the very logical point that if neither candidate comes in with a majority, then it is the duty of the convention to choose.
But in politics, logic is not always enough.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Torture and the Campaign
My thanks to Slate, for not having forgotten that torture is repugnant to American values. Here is a site search which shows some of their work.
In particular, Dahlia Lithwick’s article on how the administration has worked deliberately to make torture acceptable deserves recognition, and a lot more press. I wish it would get enough press that torture and the corrupting of American became a campaign issue.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Weapons, Space, and Unilateral Tendencies
If the Bush administration does one thing well, it is to find creative ways to pursue its unilateralist agenda. A case in point: its use of a malfunctioning spy satellite as an excuse for testing the adaptation of an anti-missile system as an anti-satellite weapon.
Monday, February 18, 2008
The Day Before
The Wisconsin presidential primary is tomorrow. Barack Obama was in Eau Claire Saturday. Apparently, weather kept Hillary Clinton from also making an appearance here. Mike Huckabee is here right now, I think. John McCain did not make it to Eau Claire, but he was in LaCrosse, which is not too far away.
Wow, that’s more politicking than western Wisconsin has seen in a really long time. And that doesn’t count the phone calls, door-to-door canvassers, and politically fortified junk mail that’s been coming.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Do we need a wily president?
Robert McElvaine’s HNN post this week captures well the political dilemma that faces many Democrats. Barack Obama has the potential to unite some independents, moderates, and liberal Democrats in a way that could both win the election and, potentially, do the country some good. Hillary Clinton has the potential to unite the Republicans, while John McCain attracts independents.
In short, according to McElvaine (and many others), Obama’s the candidate most likely to win for the Democrats. That’s probably true.
So what’s the problem with that? It is not simply Obama’s inexperience. (Honestly, is there any evidence that he would be a less experienced administrator than McCain?) It is that we need a president with some of the darker skills in his portfolio as well as an audacious hopefulness. As Fred Kaplan notes in his new book (excerpted in Slate)”Wily, shrewd, calculating, manipulative . . . are qualities that a world power must occasionally harness in pursuit of its interests.”
Hillary Clinton has those qualities. In fact, as Erica Jong notes, even some of the actions she has received the most heat for have a logical base:
As a senator she has learned compromise and negotiation. She has gotten to know red America as well as blue. . . . She knows this country is full of "security" moms as well as soccer moms. Since she is a woman, she has to show she's ready to be commander in chief. Hence her "triangulation" on Iraq and her signing the absurd Lieberman-Kyl resolution, which calls on our government to use "military instruments" to "combat, contain and [stop]" Iran's meddling in Iraq.
Maybe you buy that, maybe you don’t. But the current president has shown how limited the bull-in-the-china shop approach is. Jimmy Carter’s policy swings remind us that good will alone does not equally good geopolitical thinking. Clinton’s capacity to triangulate, while highly irritating in some contexts, is an essential capacity for a world leader, regardless of her goals.
In short, while Obama would make the better candidate, I think Clinton would be the better foreign policy president. Moreover, his inexperience could be a terrible liability to the nation if it makes his foreign policy decisions indecisive or contrary.
So who will I vote for when the primary circus comes to Wisconsin? I really don’t know. I like Obama's "new math," the way he unites people with a better vision. Clinton does not have that. I want to vote for him in a way that I do not feel for Clinton. I'm just not sure who in three years would be better for the nation, a wily president or a hopeful one.
Friday, January 4, 2008
Hope, Experience, and Iowa
Samuel Johnson once called a second marriage, “The triumph of hope over experience.” The same might be said of the Iowa caucuses.
Friday, December 28, 2007
A Very Human Foolishness
Ralph Luker begins a column today at Cliopatria with this truly intelligent and, sadly, apropos quote:
Anyone who thinks they can predict the consequences of a political assassination is a damn fool.-- Eric Rauchway
So true, so true. Yet there is nothing more human than to try to master events by understanding them.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Short thoughts before Christmas
Bush and Congress.
Like it or not, and I don’t, President Bush and his congressional allies have done a masterful job of thwarting the Democrats. Some of this may be fecklessness on the part of Democrats, but a lot of it is the Bush Administration’s very clear understanding of presidential powers.
Whoever the next president is should study this closely—along with Bill Clinton’s ability to use his powers to restrain the Republican Congress of the mid-1990s.
That doesn’t mean that the Democrats in 2007 have done nothing. Actually the domestic accomplishments do mark a sharp change from the previous session. But it indicates clearly that, hard as some Congresses may try, it is just impossible to return to the 19th century ideal in which Congress has the leading role. From the standpoint of both public perception and policy accomplishments, either the president leads, or Washington is a mess.
Primary Season.
The first 6 weeks of 2008 are going to be an extraordinarily frantic time in American politics. Neither party has a clear front-runner. Probably, one candidate in each party will catch fire just enough to win quickly.
However, I still think this is the best chance in my adult life—maybe my entire life—for one or both of the conventions to actually choose a nominee. That would be truly fascinating.
Finally
Whatever your persuasion, religious or political, may you find joy in this season!
Friday, November 23, 2007
Scientific Proof, Political Realities, and Misplaced Faith
Nuclear energy has been making a comeback politically for several years. In particular the specter of global warming has shifted some environmentalists from opposition to support. Reports of studies such as these on the dangers of radiation will probably add to that.
Assuming this trend continues, the debate will shift from whether we expand nuclear power to what different reactor technologies we will use and where we will store the mess. (Look out Nevada!)
This shift is a reminder of the perils of using science in politics.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Malaise and Thankfulness
I’ve been away for a while. Deadlines and duties have kept me snared. Also, quite honestly, I have found so much of the news depressing of late. It feels like another time of “malaise”, and I have found it hard to write.
In my first draft, I started giving examples of why I think that, but I have rejected it. Instead, I want to focus on tomorrow.
Thanksgiving is a day in which, if the tradition is at all true, people of different faiths and visions came together in a common celebration. Those moments of common celebration don’t always triumph, and there are those who fear more than one faith sharing it today. But it is our ability to remember and reinvent and try however fumblingly to make a City on the Hill that glows with the best that is in us that has saved us from dark times in the past, that has made the turning away from tyrannies of slavery and bigotry possible, and that I hope will make us again not a nation that celebrates its willingness to torture but it’s willingness to better itself, collectively and one-by-one.
So in my own way, Let Me Give Thanks:
For my family and my friends,
For my wife who keeps me rooted to the ground,
For my career and my colleagues and the joy of teaching,
For the challenging student who first seems to be a pain but who later becomes an inspiration,
For the source of tomorrow’s feast, the animals themselves, the plants, the farmers, the migrant and native-born Wisconsinites who work at the nearby Turkey Store,
For everyone whose labors have eased my life.
Let me be thankful for the chaotic history of this nation that can still be a beacon and still rouse us from malaise to aspiration,
and finally,
Let me give thanks for those who challenge my thinking and force me to grow (even if I do grouse about it).
May this be a time when all of us find something in our lives, no matter how small and fleeting, for which we are truly thankful.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
A Clear Day and a Gridlocked War
It’s a beautiful day outside. In a bit, I’m going to enjoy it and perhaps get my blood pressure back to its normal borderline. Why the need for nature’s blood pressure tonic? This article on the war and senatorial fecklessness.
I’ve written before about the underlying constitutional dilemma. The short version is this.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Blackwater, the Surge, and Imperialism
One of the many reasons that it is hard to credit the surge with anything more than a temporary effect—if that—is the fundamentally insane way in which the United States goes about day-to-day activities. The present controversy over Blackwater underscores one of those insanities. This article provides a good sense of the situation.
The insanity is not simply that we are using mercenary forces. It is that we rely on mercenary forces for basic security, and we have established a legal situation in which they have no masters except, maybe, the Bush Administration.
For those who like to talk about an Imperial America, I can think of no better evidence than our demanding that these forces be outside of Iraqi law. Extraterritoriality is what the British, the French, and every other imperial power has demanded for its troops and mercenaries.
That the Bush administration has exempted these forces from Iraqi law shows how little it really trusts the Iraqi government. That these forces are also outside American law is more proof that this administration remains both arrogant and incompetent. Iraqis see these forces as American, as well they should. We brought them there, and their crimes are on our hands. If we do not act, the Iraqis will draw their own conclusions.
If we cannot act, if as the linked article states these forces so essential that they cannot be curtailed, then what reason do we have to think that we can control anything else there? What good can such uncontrolled forces accomplish?
One last thought: to what extent is the proposed force drawdown dependent on maintaining or even increasing our reliance on private forces like Blackwater?
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Voyagers 1 and 2: the 30th anniversary
This has little or nothing to do with presidents or the great issues of the day. But this short retrospective of Voyagers 1 and 2 brings a smile to my face.
These are the sort of things that we—both our nation and our species--do well, and I wish that we did many more of them.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Music, Silence, and Candidates
At New Music Box, Andrew Waggoner has a wonderful article on music and the loss of silence. Here is one of many statements that have expressed thoughts of mine far better than I ever have:
In many world societies, however, there are still spaces—if only interior, or metaphorical, or temporal—set aside for contemplation, for noiseless recalibration of the soul, and in contemporary American culture there are almost none. Our social rituals are constrained by the incessant soundtrack imposed in our public spaces, and our places of worship, by and large, have given themselves over to a muzak-based sense of liturgy that tells us at every step of the way what to feel and with what intensity.
I think this is why I no longer listen to candidates.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
The FISA Collapse
When I first heard about the Democrats providing enough votes to pass the new FISA Act, I considered writing an entry partially defending their action. After all, the law has a sunset provision. It is not an easy thing to put limits on George Bush who is, like it or not, the president at a time in which sophisticated terrorist threats do exist. And, sad but true, Americans are not terribly concerned about civil liberties these days. The potential political costs were not minor.
But the more I have read about it, the worse it gets. This was not a hard-fought compromise. This was a failure of will, with the sunset provision as its only redeeming feature.
Friday, August 3, 2007
Too Many Rooms, Too Many Elephants
Gregory Pence has an enjoyable article on the clichés that run rampant both inside and outside of bluebooks. It is worth a look.
The phrase that has been irritating me lately is “the elephant in the room.” It’s been around a while. I remember it coming up in therapy discussions of family dynamics and denial in the mid-1980s. That is long before this 2006 book, or this one.
Lately, a whole herd of these pachyderms have been stampeding the information superhighway (remember that one?). Just look at this recent online article, or this blog headline, or this one. There’s even a picture of the beast.
All clichés begin life as meaningful phrases, but then they have the misfortune of being pounded into irrelevancy by overuse.
This elephant has been pounded enough. Let’s put it back in the savanna. Please.
Monday, July 23, 2007
CNN and YouTube
Lot’s of people are a bit gaga over the CNN/YouTube Presidential debate. Even Slate’s curmudgeonly Kausfiles can only criticize CNN for not going far enough in giving the YouTubers free reign.
So it’s good, if depressing, to see this Washington Post article on a digital divide that is not getting smaller, but is growing. It reminds us that this new form of questioning, while reducing slightly the media’s power as gatekeeper, does nothing to weaken the role of income and class in keeping the riff-raff from asking embarrassing questions.
In fact the very real democratizing possibilities of the web have always been limited by a dovetailing of American’s long-held love for the latest technology with online advertiser's desire to target the upper half of the economic food chain.
News media began expanding their video content long before many people had the capacity to view it easily. They did so because advertisers wanted their products to be seen in that context. What the advertisers got were viewers who were younger (and, they hoped, more impressionable) and those who were likely to have a higher average income than the folks who were limited by phone modems or who had no access at all. Although broadband access has expanded greatly since then, the Post article reminds us that there remains a broad swath of the population that is simply cut out.
CNN has found a great way to be cool for a day. YouTube gets more exposure in the adult world. Advertisers sell products. And if you can’t afford the internet—or if you live out in the sticks--maybe you can see highlights later.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Iraqi Refugees
This article by Bill Bateman at Blog Them Out of the Stone Age is required reading. (Be sure to follow the link near the top to Bob’s recent guest column at Altercation for more information on the same topic.) It’s the story of the hard life and horrid death of Mayada Salahi, who worked as a translator for the United States in Iraq.
It’s also the story of how we are failing the people who have worked most closely with us.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Lady Bird
It made me sad yesterday when I learned about the passing of Lady Bird Johnson.
Not many people can claim that they made the country a bit more beautiful. Lady Bird did.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
2+2=5, or the new Prometheus
According to The Onion, Tom Hanks will be sitting in as president this week. One can only wish.
Former Surgeon General Dr. Richard Carmona’s testimony to Congress is only the latest in revelations that the Bush administration wants its scientists to say that “2+2=5” whenever it pleases.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Looking Around
For the past two weeks I have been engulfed in an intense but satisfying two-week institute with forty-two K-12 teachers. The only news report that I saw was the Colbert Report on Comedy Central. (That’s what living in a dorm will do for you.) I did not even do much web browsing, except for the minimum needed to assure me that the sun still rose in the East and no continents had disappeared.
Now that it’s all over except for the grading (and preparing for next year), I’m able to look around.
There’s a multi-part investigation of Dick Cheney and his role in making policy. I’ve just begun to read it, but this quote from James Baker III may well capture the gist of it:
"He has been pretty damn good at accumulating power, extraordinarily effective and adept at exercising power."
To quote a host of B movies, and at least one Hardy Boy’s novel, “If only he had used his powers for good.”
Walter Dellinger and Dahlia Lithwick have begun their 2007 Supreme Court Conversation at Slate. If it is as good as the 2006 Conversation it will be well worth following.
I get the impression that in the past two weeks nothing happened in the presidential campaign that is worth remembering. If I’m wrong please let me know.
OK, there was one thing that might be worth remembering: Michael Bloomberg may run as an independent candidate.
The history of independent candidates and attempts to form third parties has not been good in the last half-century. Generally speaking, the strongest candidates have not been that interested in truly establishing a political party that would outlast them, and the people who work so hard at forming third parties simply don’t get the press they need if the don’t have a big name to grab the reporters and make the big venues, like Comedy Central.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Sheer Decency
OK, this has nothing to do with presidents. And I have no profound analysis to add.
But the sheer decency at the core of this story deserves wide recognition.
Saturday, June 9, 2007
Patenting Life
Here’s an issue that I wish was debated in the primaries. The J. Craig Venter Institute has applied for a patent for a synthetic life form.
Friday, June 8, 2007
Strange Month
The next presidential campaign is well underway with debates on both sides, but it’s half a year before the first primaries. Charles Krauthammer has as good a defense of the current system as you are likely to see, but the process is still awfully hard on everyone.
A majority of Congress has voted for a withdrawal timetable, but using the powers of the presidency and a dedicated minority, George Bush’s war policy remains in place. So the war in Iraq drags on politically in weird dreamlike way, neither supported nor repudiated. Sadly the real war is what even the best wars are, nightmarish.
Bush still rules the war, but he and a bi-partisan coalition striving for immigration reform have been defeated—at least for the moment—by another bi-partisan coalition made up of people who either oppose the reform as it stands or who are looking for ways to straddle the fence.
This article on the immigration debate in the Houston Chronicle ends with a revealing set of findings from a new poll. To quote:
In a recent poll by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, 55 percent of the respondents said penalizing employers who hire illegals is the best way to reduce illegal immigration. One in four said more border agents is the best answer, and 7 percent favored more border fences.When the word "amnesty" was not invoked, 62 percent of Republicans said they favored letting illegal immigrants now in the country obtain citizenship if they have jobs, pass background checks and pay fines. But only 47 percent of Republicans said they favored giving amnesty to illegal immigrants if they met those same conditions.
What an odd world we live in. The word “amnesty” matters more than the substance of the offer to a key swing group of voters. (I wonder if many in the same group also oppose gay marriage but would accept on a point-by-point basis giving gay couples the rights of marriage.)
Then there is this last paragraph, also concerning the Pew poll:
Democrats, independents and moderate and liberal Republicans were most concerned about jobs, but conservative Republicans were about equally concerned with jobs and terrorism.
Is the border a front in the war on terror? If so, what does that mean? We don’t even have a consensus on that.
Strange month.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Primary Madness an Opportunity?
Columnist David Broder echoes my comments and those of many others on the upcoming presidential primary fiasco. Front-loading the primaries is really, really, really insane.
However, there could be a good—or at least interesting—outcome. The nomination might not be settled before the convention.
Rick Shenkman has been arguing for a while that political bosses nominated stronger presidential candidates than the primary system gives us today. We might just get a chance to see.
Friday, May 4, 2007
"Madness, Madness"
Florida is moving its Presidential Primary back to January 29. As the doctor said at the end of the Bridge on the River Kwai, ”Madness, Madness.”
Actually, it’s not the primaries being so early that haunts me; it’s the thought that we could have up to 9 months of a presidential campaign that follows. That’s long enough to have a kid, but at least with pregnancy, you get to make love first.
Thursday, May 3, 2007
A Checked Congress
Our national government is designed to gridlock in the absence of a strong majority of sentiment. Just check out James Madison in Federalist # 10 and 51. A Republican form of government, checks and balances, and a large nation can resist more effectively the passions of faction, whether from a minority or a majority. It is hard for a cabal to kidnap policy.
As many Democrats now leave behind their stated goal to end the war to find compromise, it is wise to remember that fact. The government is designed to resist sudden changes in course by a simple majority.
Sadly, for our county, our course at the present time is deeper into the war. That course is set by a president whose abilities as commander-in-chief are now distrusted by most Americans. But a significant minority still supports him. Buttressed by that and by the power of the presidency in our system of checks and balances, President Bush can continue to wage war, limited only by the resources at his command.
Monday, April 30, 2007
A Blunt Tool
First of all, my thanks to Rick for inviting me to join him here.
As I said to a colleague the other day, this is a great time to teach the constitution. Unfortunately, by definition that makes it a difficult time for the nation.
A majority of Congress, including a few Republicans, has declared that it has no confidence in President Bush’s conduct of the war. Furthermore, both the results of the 2006 election and current polls, have led them to believe that this is also the will of the people.
Unlike parliamentary systems, our constitution provides no mechanism for unseating a president on “no-confidence” grounds. The constitution does not require President Bush to accept their verdict, and he has not done so. Because the opposition to Bush does not have a 2/3 majority, it cannot stop his actions in the short run. For the same reason, impeachment—or at least conviction and removal from office—is outside the power of the majority.
Thus the congressional majority is left with one weapon, the power of the purse. It may not be able to withdraw the US from the war (because of Bush’s veto power) but it can put limits on future military funds.
Conditional release of funds is a blunt and unwieldy weapon. Most obviously, it reduces President Bush’s ability to maneuver diplomatically or militarily. One does not have to agree with Rudy Giuliani’s “waive the white flag” rhetoric to realize that Bush supporters have a point about that.
But that brings us back to the lack of confidence. If the majority of the populace and of the Congress no longer has faith in Bush’s competence and/or integrity, what should that congressional majority do? They have no ability to administer foreign policy. They cannot perform the diplomatic and political maneuvers, secret negotiations, and other slights-of-hand that a competent president would use in extricating us from the situation.
All they can do for now is either represent that lack of faith and not order new funding or set conditions on that funding, despite the problem of telegraphing our intensions. Or they can fail to represent that lack of faith, set voluntary benchmarks, and cross their collective fingers that the president will demonstrate a competence that he has so far lacked.
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